East Asian Anthropology in the Era of Uncertainties
Online Meeting, November 27-28, 2021
Convened by: East Asian Anthropological Association, Department of Anthropology, and Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Shandong University, Jinan, P.R.C.
The newly emerging, post-pandemic world order makes its impact felt through various accelerating changes and social crises, which could hardly be anticipated by experts in thinking and acting upon the flow of events. A key implication of this bio-political state of emergency, which is of crucial relevance for anthropology at present, may be identified as a reversal of institutional patterns of sociality, as well as of traditional notions associated with community and collective responsibility.
Moreover, this transition into new social formations involves a shift towards the individualization of social responsibility in contexts familiar to the anthropology of East Asian societies. Alongside these social formations, an equally prominent tendency involves the expansion of preexisting kinds of structural inequality and class or gender based divisions.
Within this unsettling context of social relations, the various rifts and contestations widely emerging in the era of unprecedented uncertainties are presenting numerous challenges for East Asian anthropology. Furthermore, these transitions may be reflected upon as a new ethnographic ground for analyzing configurations of politics, economy, and social organization on both regional and global scales.
We invite ethnographically informed contributions by specialists in the anthropology of East Asia, as well as by anthropologists and social scientists whose expertise and interests intersect the above themes and explore connections between East Asia and other ethnographic areas. Potential proposals, drawing on East Asian specializations and/or on various trans-regional connections, may also engage any of the following topics:
1) Lives in isolation and austerity; ethnographies of silence, ‘a-social’ coexistence and estrangement, family disunity, domestic violence; aging and solitary living; community building, kinship, and new formations of sociality.
2) Gender, reproductive labor, women’s work and solidarity; masculinities and work; precariousness and post-pandemic economies; new patterns of labor, flexible economy, and transaction platforms; social security and welfare; office-work and the future of East Asian cities.
3) Consumption and markets; food governance, regimes of urban and rural hygiene; environmentalism, natural disasters and biological hazards in the Asia and Pacific Region; eco-management, sustainable development, climate change, the Anthropocene.
4) Borders, trans-border relations, and border-crossings; changing patterns of mobility in North and East Asia; migration, multiculturalism, and tourism.
5) Societies, ecology, epidemics; ontologies and multi-species ethnography; bioethics, diagnostic technologies, and medical care; medicines and native healing epistemologies; biosocial perspectives on covid-2019; ethnographies of contagion, vulnerability, social distancing, media and cell phone communication.
6) Urban landscapes in Asia; neo-traditionalism, religious movements and revitalization, ethnic legitimacies and ethnic identity.
7) Public anthropology, expert knowledge; social conscience, public opinion, socio-political discourse and the relevance of anthropology in the post-pandemic world.
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Please fill in both the registration form and individual or panel submission form (online or by download) by using the following links and send them to eaaa.jinan.2021@outlook.com by June 30, 2021.
Registration Form:
Online submission or download form
Individual Paper:
Online submission or download form
Panel Proposal:
Online submission or download form
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Procedure of registration and important dates*
- Registration for the Conference by 30 June
- Submissions of individual paper or panel proposals by 30 June
- Receiving decisions and related notices by 31 August
- Finalization of conference program by 15 October
* The links for the participation in the conference will be provided only for those who have registered. The conference being held online, however, there will be no registration fees.
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We look forward to your submissions and to your participation in the 2021 EAAA conference in Jinan, China, this November!